It’s Awfully Cheerful!

This tabletop roleplaying game, which we’re calling ACE! with an exclamation point, is one of fast, cinematic, action comedy. With the emphasis on comedy. To play you need a handful of six-sided dice, a pen, and some paper. Each player plays one Hero, except for one player who takes the role of the Director.

Think of ACE! as an irreverent, fun-packed movie. You might play as ghost hunters in New York City, a band of plucky galactic guardians, vampire slayers, or soldiers of fortune in the Los Angeles underground. Heck, you might even be cartoon animals. Good grief!

It’s Multigenre!

Some roleplaying games are strictly fantasy or sci-fi. They have a world or setting which defines the characters you can play and the types of adventure you can have.

Not this one.

This is a multi-dimensional, time-hopping, genre-mashing, pan-galactic portal into any type of adventure you can imagine! Want to play in a fantasy world full of elves and orcs? Crew a starship as it explores the galaxy? Hunt vampires in Victorian London? Play as animal detectives, robot cowboys, wizards, ninjas, or time traveling bounty hunters?

The only limit is your imagination, and the requirement that you have fun.

Fun, Fast, and Simple!

It’s not just Awfully Cheerful! It’s fast and fun, too!

You won’t get bogged down in endless rules and character sheets that look like tax forms. Your ACE! ID Card contains everything you need to know, and it’s only about the size of a credit card! But don’t try to spend it. It’s not a real credit card.

Making your Hero takes about five minutes. And that includes a coffee break.

Download Free Character Cards Here

Rules

d6 DICE Pool

ACE! is a dice pool game. When you attempt a task, you roll a number of six-sided dice and try to beat a target number.

Fun fact -- did you know that 1986's Ghostbusters RPG, by Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford, was the first ever dice pool RPG? Also Sandy Petersen has written an awesome foreword for the AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE!

Rules

stats & focuses

You have four Stats -- Smarts, Moves, Style, and Brawn. If you have a Moves score of 3, you roll three six-sided dice when you try to jump a motorcycle over a ravine. If you roll high enough, you succeed. It's pretty simple!

For each Stat you also have a Focus. For Smarts it might be a science, or chess, or history. For Style it might be bluffing, singing, or fashion, and for Brawn it might be brawling or swimming. You can choose from plenty of focuses. Foci. Focuses. Whatever. Anyway, if the thing you're trying to do relates to a Focus, you get to roll an extra two dice.

Rules

traits & karma

You choose a trait, like Angry or Cheerful or Rebellious or Despondent. This, combined with your Role, makes you a Gullible Vampire, a Brave Turtle, or a Squeamish Scientist.

Finally, you have a bunch of Karma points. These can be spent for extra dice or to absorb damage from attacks, and they're recovered by using your trait. They’re like a combination of hit points and hero points.

Rules

explosions & calamity!

Sixes explode! When you roll your dice, any sixes that you roll you can roll again, adding the new number to the original six. If that reroll is a six, you do it again, until you stop rolling sixes. In this way, there’s always a chance, however small, of you accomplishing any task.

What, I hear you ask, is a CALAMITY DIE? The Calamity Die is how you find out that your friends really aren't your friends. You see, when you make a roll, one of those dice is a different color, and is called the Calamity Die. And if your roll fails, and also the Calamity Die rolls a 1, your so-called 'friends' decide what happens to you. It won't kill you or anything, but... Well, we'll leave that thought with you.

ACE Issue #1

If you’ve ever held a comic-book in your hand, the Awfully Cheerful Engine! will feel very familiar!

Issue #1 is the core rulebook with just 30 pages in a bright, colorful comic-book sized format. We even gave it an issue number, like a comic-book!

After that, each issue is a standalone adventure, designed for one-shots or short campaigns. One week you might be fighting ghosts on the streets of Manhattan, and the next you might be exploring the frontiers of space in your trusty starship!

One thing will always stay the same though. We don’t take anything seriously! Life’s too short for that!

Browse through Issues #1-9 Here

PICK UP A COPY HERE

Watch An Actual Play

Watch the EN Publishing live stream where we play the ACE! Adventure Strange Science

ACE Open licence

You - yes, you there at the back! - can write and publish material for the Awfully Cheerful Engine! You can sell it, or give it away for free. It’s all good. We’ve even got an awfully cheerful logo you can use to promote your products and indicate compatibility.

There’s a few rules though. If you use the logo, you must follow THE RULES! They’re pretty simple and common-sense, and similar to other compatibility logo licenses you may have seen.

The Rules

These rules constitute a compatibility license. By using the compatibility logo below, you agree to this license.

  1. You acknowledge and agree that EN Publishing owns trademarks and copyright to the compatibility logo, and the name “Awfully Cheerful Engine!” and you agree not to contest EN Publishing’s ownership of them.
  2. The license is a non-exclusive, non-transferable royalty-free license to use the compatibility logo (below) on products which are designed to be compatible with the Awfully Cheerful Engine!
  3. The logo must be smaller than the title of your product (i.e. it can’t be so big that it looks like the title of your game is “Awfully Cheerful Engine!")
  4. You may not alter the logo (except in size), including its colors or design, except that you may reproduce it in black-and-white if your product or product cover is also black-and-white.
  5. Your product must be powered by the rules found in the Awfully Cheerful Engine #1 (the core rulebook). Obviously. Why else would you be here?
  6. You may not suggest that EN Publishing endorses, owns, or is in any way responsible for any part of your product other than by including the compatibility logo.
  7. You may not use EN Publishing’s name on your product (except see [9] below), and you may not name your product “Awfully Cheerful Engine!” or use those words in the title of your product. You agree not to create or use any names similar enough to ours that people might believe that your material was produced by us.
  8. You must write your own material. You may refer to our material, but you cannot simply copy it and resell our work.
  9. On your title page, or the page where you include your own copyright notices, you must include the following text: “Awfully Cheerful Engine! is a trademark of EN Publishing. The A.C.E! Compatibility Logo is used with permission. See www.awfullycheerfulengine.com.”
  10. We may terminate this license at any time, either globally or for an individual licensee. If we do so, you will no longer be able to put the compatibility logo on new products. If you have existing physical stock, you may continue to sell it off but must remove the logo on the next printing. If you have electronic products, you should remove the logo within 3 months.
Download the Compatibility Logo Here